Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Weeding 101

“Make sure you pull out the weed with its root”, my grandfather would instruct me lovingly, over the garden sounds of the water sprays emerging from hoses, whistling leaks at the garden faucets and the chirping of birds in dark trees silhouetted against the dawn.
I was but a teenager or younger, impatient to boot, loving our time together in his garden but unappreciative of his requirement for thoroughness. Both, my years in boarding school and my demanding parents before and since then had appeared to care only about one metric, one measure of success… “Was the job you set out to do completed?” If the evidence suggested that it was, then it was proof enough. So without knowing it, and without anyone intending it, my reactions, even my instincts were honed to present successful, quick and efficient completions. It didn’t always matter that I didn’t pull every weed out by its root or wash every dirty dish with soap or clean the tires on the car at the end of the long carwash ritual. As long as the weeds were no longer physically evident, the dishes looked washed and the car appeared clean what did it matter?
…Or did it matter?
In those heady days of youth, time was of the essence so I could move onto my next thing, the attaboy from the completion of work was needed for the reassurance that reverberated from it while the penalty of slower, deliberate and thorough work was never considered or incurred. So I adopted this mode of doing things, of settling issues quickly but not always conclusively and of glossing over things, making fixes superficial instead of foundational. Getting deep inside the engine room to attend to root cause was not required if I could just bandaid the carburetor! The investment of time, learning and patience to understand things more deeply and to find and implement the correct fix always seemed a bar too high to go after.
Somewhere in the last forty years I learned about that virtue of thoroughness, began seeing the wisdom in the pursuit of perfection and have come to appreciate the difference between what it means to do the job and what it means to do it right. No one person takes the credit for this epiphany nor did it come abruptly. The universe took its time to teach me.
So this morning, forty years on from that day in the garden I am weeding the flower bed in my own front yard assisted by my daughter. She sits on the ground and with intent and deliberation pulls weeds in a small patch between two shrubs. As I look at the long length of flower bed ahead of us I catch myself just in time… I was about to rush her, to quicken her pace, demand completion over quality…about to send her back to my garden from forty years ago. Instead I say nothing, I slow down to enjoy the moment with her and decide that my silence at and encouragement of her detailed work, albeit slow, is the better life lesson that I can teach.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw him stumble and reach out for my hand
one so sure-footed that others had always reached out for his.
I heard him panting and gasping for breath
one so strong that it had appeared he never rested.
I felt him grasp tightly, my arm for balance
one so independent that he had seemed to need no help
I saw him tear up as he reflected on of his life
one so driven that he’d seldom looked back
I heard him talk about the feelings and hurt
one so formidable that we’d never considered his pain
I felt him turning spiritual and philosophical
one so practical that he had appeared only to see the material.

He thinks today’s is the last suit he’ll ever buy
a man who seldom acknowledged endings
He recapped simple instructions as we drove
a man who knows how to do everything
He said things that are obvious and apparent
a man who had little patience with chit-chat.
He thanked me today for a suit I bought him
a man who bought me every suit I’ve ever owned
He wondered aloud why people are mean
a man …

4:34am
(@ Conca di marini on the Amalfi coast) I’m
leaning forward on the metal railing of a terrace a
balcony seemingly in suspense between heaven and earth The
top of the cliff a thousand steps above my balcony The
Adriatic Sea seven hundred below heaven
and sea are connected here only by a winding string of stairs whose
existence is contingent upon stray reflected lights of the night.
Here and now. this
is a place of intimate grace like
no other I have been …a
stirring of the senses a
purring within the soul like
a gentle breeze that causes the chest to flare and
the eyelids to close Not
to see what they cannot see But
to lend vision to an exploration Of
being, cause, reason, soul, spirit and life.
…All is in good measure here there
is no overload of the senses no
urge to fight nor
to flight emotions
stretch toward introspection but
gently No
rush to determine or feel Only
to bathe in the temerity of the moment and
the solemnity of this grace A
spiritual transaction more potent perhaps by
t…